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- Gotbit founder Aleksei Andriunin has been released from U.S. custody after he became once sentenced to time served by a resolve on over market manipulation.
- Andriunin had already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud and became once sentenced closing week to eight months in reformatory
- Andriunin now faces deportation, while Gotbit has forfeited $23 million in crypto and has ceased operations
Aleksei Andriunin, the 26-year-aged founding father of crypto market-making agency Gotbit, will soon be on a airplane to Russia after a U.S. resolve on sentenced him to time served over market manipulation. Andriunin became once closing week sentenced to eight months in a U.S. reformatory for conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud following a guilty plea in March, a term already served within the future of pre-trial detention in Portugal. Consequently, the Russian became once released and now faces deportation, while the company he founded faces closure, having sacrificed $23 million as fragment of the plea deal.
Operation Token Mirrors Succeeds
From 2018 to 2024, Gotbit operated as a high-quantity crypto “market maker,” deploying tool-driven wash trades to inflate token volumes and mislead every exchanges and traders, actions that reportedly earned the agency tens of hundreds of hundreds once a year and employed over 200 folks. In a 2019 interview, Andriunin described how Gotbit feeble coded algorithms to generate false quantity, enabling customers’ tokens to seem on CoinMarketCap and secure traction on buying and selling platforms.
Andriunin became once one in every of 18 folks arrested closing October as fragment of the FBI-led “Operation Token Mirrors,” a pioneering investigation whereby federal agents created a decoy token—NexFundAI—to procure wash-traders within the act. A number of companies fell for it, along side Gotbit, ZM Quant, and CLS World. The initiative resulted in over $25 million in crypto seizures and marked the first criminal enforcement journey focusing on crypto market manipulation by U.S. companies.
Andriunin Sentenced to Time Served
Having been arrested in 2024, Andriunin became once deported from Portugal to the U.S. to face charges concerning to GotBit’s feature, the effect he pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit market manipulation and wire fraud, acknowledging that Gotbit feeble coded tool and a few accounts to artificially boost token buying and selling volumes with the target of assisting customers in securing listings on fundamental exchanges.
As fragment of the plea settlement, Gotbit handed over round $23 million in seized cryptocurrency, along side stablecoins held in wallets controlled by Andriunin, and agreed to remain operations within the future of a five-year probation length. Whether it survives in any respect is up for debate.
On June 12, Safe Angel Kelley sentenced Andriunin to eight months in reformatory plus 300 and sixty five days of supervised originate. Nonetheless, when weighed in opposition to the time he spent in Portuguese custody after his October 2024 arrest, the Russian faced no extra time in reformatory and became once released. His attorney, Roger Burlingame, expressed assist for his client, noting Andriunin is “anticipating getting dwelling to his wife and family.”
